Relations with African States

Official delegations from almost every other African state visited
Pretoria in 1992 or 1993 to discuss ways to strengthen bilateral ties.
South Africa's estimated 100 assistance projects in twenty-two African
countries in 1991 more than doubled by 1994 and provided technical aid
and training in agriculture, wildlife conservation, education, and
health care. The effects of the early-1990s drought in southern Africa
would have been even more devastating to the region's agriculture and
wildlife if South Africa had not provided transportation and food
assistance to its neighbors.

The change in South Africa's regional standing was dramatically
marked by its admission to the Southern African Development Community
(SADC) in August 1994. The twelve-member organization (also including
Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia,
Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) aims to promote regional
cooperation in economic development and security affairs. The SADC
annual meeting of heads of state and government was held in Johannesburg
on August 28, 1995. The assembled leaders agreed to create a regional
common market with the elimination of all internal trade barriers by the
year 2000. They also signed an agreement to share water resources among
SADC member nations.

Almost all African countries had depended on South African trade even
during the sanctions era, despite their strong rhetorical condemnation
of the apartheid regime. In 1991 South Africa's trade with the rest of
the continent was at least US$3.5 billion, and this figure increased
steadily as apartheid was being dismantled.

For the five landlocked countries of southern Africa (Botswana,
Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia, and Malawi), South Africa's well-developed
system of roads, railroads, and port facilities provides a vital trade
link. The Southern African Customs Union (SACU), headquartered in South
Africa, provides a common customs area, including Botswana, Lesotho,
Swaziland, and Namibia (see Foreign Trade, ch. 3).

Botswana

Relations with Botswana were normalized in the early 1990s, after a
period of strained ties in the 1980s. The most contentious issue between
the two countries had been Botswana's willingness to provide safe haven
for the ANC military wing, MK, and, to a lesser extent, for other
opposition groups such as the Black Consciousness Movement of Azania
(BCMA--the external wing of the Black Consciousness Movement). Although
Botswana officially prohibited ANC use of its territory as a base for
attacks against South Africa, the ANC violated this policy during the
1980s, provoking several small-scale raids by the South African Defence
Forces (SADF) against ANC bases in Botswana. At the same time, although
Botswana joined in the international condemnation of apartheid, its
geographic and economic vulnerability deterred it from imposing economic
sanctions against South Africa, with whom it maintained extensive but
unpublicized trade relations.

Relations improved in the early 1990s, as apartheid was gradually
dismantled. ANC camps in Botswana were closed in 1991 and 1992, as
several hundred political exiles returned to South Africa under a
program administered by the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR).

Lesotho

Until the 1960s, several South African governments pressed for the
incorporation of Lesotho, then a British protectorate, into the Union of
South Africa. As a landlocked country completely surrounded by South
Africa, Lesotho depended heavily on South Africa for its economic
well-being. After Lesotho became independent in October 1966, South
Africa played a major role in the country's internal affairs--for
example, by supporting the new government led by Chief Leabua Jonathan.

Tensions between the two countries rose in the 1970s because of
Lesotho's criticism of South Africa at the UN and at the OAU, its
support for the ANC, its provision of safe haven to antiapartheid
fighters such as MK, and its close ties to a number of socialist
countries. Relations became severely strained in April 1983, when the
Jonathan government announced that Lesotho was at war with South Africa,
and again in 1984, when Lesotho refused to sign a nonaggression pact
with South Africa. In response, South Africa impounded shipments of arms
to Lesotho, threatened economic sanctions, and suspended talks
concerning the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (a thirty-year
cooperative engineering venture that would supply water to South Africa
and provide electric power and financial compensation to Lesotho).
Tensions eased in 1984, as some ANC forces withdrew from Lesotho, but in
1985 new tensions prompted Pretoria to step up security measures along
the border between the two countrries.

In early 1986, South Africa backed a military coup in Maseru,
bringing into power a government more sympathetic to Pretoria's security
interests. Lesotho expelled several ANC members and technicians from the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), whom Pretoria
considered a menace, and relations between the two nations improved.
Work on the Highlands Water Project resumed, and in 1987 they
established a joint trade mission. Relations continued to improve after
that, and the countries established full diplomatic ties in May 1992.
Pretoria recognized the outcome of Lesotho's March 1993 elections, the
first in twenty-two years.

In January 1994, Lesotho's democratically elected civilian government
sought South African assistance in quelling an army mutiny over pay and
conditions of service in the Lesotho Defence Forces. Pretoria refused to
intervene directly, but threatened to seal off Lesotho's borders, which
would have blocked vital commercial transportation to and from Maseru.
De Klerk and Mandela, together with the presidents of Zimbabwe and
Botswana, urged both sides to negotiate an end to the crisis, a move
that represented the likely pattern of postapartheid diplomacy in
southern Africa.

Swaziland

South Africa's relations with the Kingdom of Swaziland, one of
Africa's smallest nations--which South Africa surrounds on the north,
west, and south--were shaped by the kingdom's complete dependence on its
powerful neighbor for its economic and political well-being. During the
1970s and early 1980s, although Swaziland claimed to be neutral in the
East-West conflict, it was actually pro-Western and maintained strong
relations with South Africa, including clandestine cooperation in
economic and security matters. South Africa invested heavily in
Swaziland's economy, and Swaziland joined the Pretoria-dominated SACU.
During the 1980s, some South African businesses also used Swazi
territory as a transshipment point in order to circumvent international
sanctions on South Africa. Relying on a secret security agreement with
South Africa in 1982, Swazi officials harassed ANC representatives in
the capital, Mbabane, and eventually expelled them from Swaziland. South
African security forces, operating undercover, also carried out
operations against the ANC on Swazi territory. Throughout this time,
part of the Swazi royal family quietly sought the reintegration of
Swazi-occupied territory in South Africa into their kingdom.

In June 1993, South Africa and Swaziland signed a judicial agreement
providing for South African judges, magistrates, and prosecutors to
serve in Swaziland's courts. South Africa also agreed to provide
training for Swazi court personnel. In August 1995, the two countries
signed an agreement to cooperate in anti-crime and anti-smuggling
efforts along their common border.

Zimbabwe

Bilateral relations between South Africa and Zimbabwe improved
substantially as apartheid legally ended. In December 1993, the foreign
ministers of both countries met for the first time to discuss ways to
improve bilateral ties. Tensions between the two countries had been high
since 1965, when South Africa demonstrated tacit support for the
unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) by white-dominated Rhodesia
(Southern Rhodesia), a former British colony. South Africa also had
assisted the new regime led by Prime Minister Ian Smith for almost
fourteen years, until it was brought down by a combination of guerrilla
war and international pressure.

After Rhodesia's independence as Zimbabwe, the government in Harare
supported mandatory sanctions against South Africa and provided
political, diplomatic, and military support to the ANC in its armed
struggle. Zimbabwe also provided military assistance, including troops,
for Maputo's struggle against South African-supported insurgents in the
Mozambican National Resistance (Resistência Nacional Moçambicana--MNR
or RENAMO). SADF troops retaliated against Harare, with two raids on
alleged ANC bases in the capital in 1986 and 1987, and bomb explosions
in Harare in October 1987 and in Bulawayo in January 1988.

Relations between the two countries began to stabilize in 1990, after
Mandela was released from prison and South Africa moved toward
constitutional reform. Even before international sanctions against South
Africa were lifted, a number of unpublicized ministerial contacts took
place to discuss matters of trade and transport. President de Klerk and
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe met publicly for the first time on
January 27, 1994, when de Klerk, Mandela, Mugabe, and Botswana's
President Quett Masire joined together in urging a peaceful resolution
to a military mutiny in Lesotho.

President Mandela visited Harare in early 1995. The two countries
debated trade issues throughout the year, primarily centered around
efforts to dismantle apartheid-era tariffs. In November 1995, a ceremony
attended by presidents Mandela and Mugabe marked the opening of a new
bridge linking the two countries, across the Limpopo River.

Namibia

South Africa's relations with Namibia (formerly South-West Africa)
were normalized following the 1988 agreement that paved the way for the
solution to the interlinked conflicts in Namibia and Angola. Prior to
this agreement, Namibia had been under South Africa's control since
1919, when Pretoria received the League of Nations mandate over the
territory then known as South-West Africa. In 1946 the UN refused South
Africa's request to annex the territory. In 1964 South Africa introduced
apartheid in South-West Africa (Pretoria had granted Europeans living
there limited self-governing privileges since 1925).

The United Nations General Assembly in 1966 voted to revoke South
Africa's mandate and to place the territory under direct UN
administration. South Africa refused to recognize this UN resolution
until 1985, when President Botha ceded administrative control to the
territory's interim government. South Africa allowed a UN peacekeeping
force and an administrator to implement United Nations Security Council
Resolution 435 (1978), establishing the United Nations Transitional
Assistance Group (UNTAG) in Namibia. Finally, on December 22, 1988,
South Africa signed an agreement linking its withdrawal from the
disputed territory to an end to Soviet and Cuban involvement in the long
civil war in neighboring Angola. Namibia's new government, led by the
South-West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO), was elected in a
landslide victory in November 1989.

After Namibia's independence in March 1990, South Africa and Namibia
established diplomatic ties, but relations between the two countries
were uneasy, in part because many of Namibia's senior government
officials had been leaders in the guerrilla war to oust South Africa
from their country. Namibia nonetheless joined the Southern African
Customs Union (SACU) and continued to be almost totally dependent on
South Africa in trade and investment. In 1992, for example, 90 percent
of Namibia's imports came from South Africa, and South Africa purchased
30 percent of Namibia's exports. Relations improved as apartheid was
dismantled.

The two countries established a Joint Administrative Authority to
manage the port facilities at Walvis Bay, Namibia's only deep-water
port, which had remained under South African control after Namibian
independence. Under pressure from the ANC, South Africa then agreed to
transfer control over the port enclave to Windhoek before the 1994
elections. Namibia finally assumed control over Walvis Bay on March 1,
1994.

The prospects for multiracial democracy in South Africa prompted
Namibia to sign a series of bilateral agreements with Pretoria in
anticipation of the close ties they hoped to maintain through the rest
of the 1990s. One of these, signed in 1992, pledged cooperation in
supplying water to arid regions of both countries along their common
border. In December 1994, President Mandela announced his government's
decision to write off Namibia's debt, an estimated US$190 million owed
to South Africa. He also transferred most South African state property
in Namibia to Namibian government ownership.

Mozambique

After Mozambique's independence from Portugal in 1975, relations
between South Africa and Mozambique were shaped by the rise to power of
the revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frente de
Libertação de Moçambique--FRELIMO) government, and in particular, by
FRELIMO's commitment to support regional liberation movements. South
Africa provided covert military assistance to the anti-FRELIMO
insurgency, RENAMO. In an attempt to curtail South Africa's
intervention, Maputo entered into negotiations with Pretoria in late
1983, resulting in a non-aggression pact, the Nkomati Accord, in 1984.
This accord committed both countries to end their assistance to each
other's opposition movements, and to establish a joint security
commission to monitor implementation of the pact. South Africa continued
to assist RENAMO, however, and relations between the two countries
worsened.

After unsubstantiated allegations of South African involvement in the
death (in a plane crash) of Mozambican president Samora Machel in
October 1986, demonstrators attacked the South African trade mission in
Maputo. Pretoria threatened to retaliate by banning Mozambican migrant
laborers from South Africa's mines, but this plan was not implemented.
Even after South African security forces raided ANC bases around Maputo
in 1987, presidents Botha and Joaquim Chissano met to try to revive the
Nkomati Accord. They agreed to establish a joint commission on
cooperation and development, whereby South Africa would protect
Mozambique's Cahora Bassa power lines, which had been targets of RENAMO
sabotage, and would assist in improving Maputo's harbor as well as road
and rail links with South Africa.

Relations continued to improve in 1989 following a South African
initiative to help resolve Mozambique's civil war. Although both
Chissano and RENAMO leader Afonso Dhlakama rejected Pretoria's proposal
of United States mediation in Mozambique, Pretoria nonetheless played an
important role in persuading the two men to pursue a negotiated peace.
South African president de Klerk, Zimbabwe's president Mugabe, and other
regional leaders urged Mozambique's warring parties to sign a peace
agreement and, after they did so in October 1992, to prepare for
democratic elections. In December 1992, the UN began deploying 7,500
troops for the UN Operation in Mozambique (UNOMOZ), and the date for
Mozambique's first multiparty elections was finally set for October
1994.

In 1993 South Africa and Mozambique agreed to formalize their trade
missions in each other's capitals and to upgrade diplomatic ties. Late
that year, the two countries agreed to cooperate in repatriating more
than 350,000 Mozambicans who had sought refuge in South Africa--some of
the more than 800,000 Mozambican refugees scattered throughout the
region. The UNHCR reported that refugees continued returning to
Mozambique throughout 1994 as the elections approached.

After South Africa's April 1994 elections, Deputy President Mbeki
opened communication channels with RENAMO leaders, including Dhlakama,
in an effort to help preserve the fragile peace in Mozambique. President
Mandela made his first official state visit to the country on July 20,
1994, and he emphasized the challenges both countries faced in
strengthening democratic institutions. The two governments signed
agreements establishing a joint cooperation commission to pursue shared
development goals in agriculture, security, transportation, and
medicine.

In 1996 the two countries began to implement a South African proposal
for a small group of South African farmers to settle and farm land in
Mozambique. The proposal had originated in the desire of a few Afrikaner
farmers to leave South Africa, and both governments viewed it as a
possible means of improving the agricultural infrastructure in
Mozambique and of providing jobs for farm laborers there. For Pretoria,
the proposal held some promise of reducing the influx of farm workers
into South Africa.

Zambia

South African-Zambian relations until 1990 were shaped by Zambia's
support for antiapartheid movements inside South Africa, by its
agreement to allow anti-South African SWAPO guerrillas to operate from
Zambia's territory, and by its anti-RENAMO assistance to government
forces in Mozambique. As one of the leaders of the frontline states
against South Africa, Zambia provided safe haven for the ANC, which had
its headquarters in Lusaka, prompting military reprisals by South Africa
in the late 1980s. Relations between the two countries improved as
apartheid was being dismantled in the early 1990s, leading to several
visits by the two countries' leaders. Then-president Kaunda visited
South Africa for the first time in February 1992, and the two countries
established diplomatic ties and began to normalize trade relations later
that year. (Zambia was already South Africa's second largest African
trading partner.) President de Klerk visited Lusaka in mid-1993, the
first visit by a South African head of state. In 1994 South Africa
continued to be the most important source of Zambian imports--mostly
machinery and manufactured goods--and the two countries were exploring
new avenues for trade during the rest of the 1990s.

Angola

South Africa has long-standing geographic, commercial, and political
ties with Angola, which became independent from Portugal in November
1975. Until the early 1990s, relations between the two countries were
strained, however, owing primarily to South Africa's extensive military
support for the insurgent movement in Angola. The National Union for the
Total Independence of Angola (União Nacional para a Independência
Total de Angola--UNITA), led by Jonas Savimbi, had waged a sixteen-year
war against the Marxist-led government in Luanda. Pretoria became
Savimbi's patron principally because it feared the threat of Soviet and
Cuban expansionism, but by the late 1980s, a new geostrategic
environment was emerging in the region. The Cold War ended, accompanied
by the collapse of Angola's superpower patron, the former Soviet Union;
Cuban forces withdrew from Angola as part of the 1988 Angola-Namibia
Accord, and the Angolan civil war ended tentatively, with a peace
agreement in May 1991.

Angola's first democratic elections in September 1992 failed, after
Savimbi refused to accept his electoral defeat and the war resumed.
Pretoria then supported a negotiated outcome to the festering civil war,
although a few South Africans (said to be operating outside Pretoria's
control) continued their support to Savimbi.

Relations between South Africa and Angola deteriorated after Pretoria
withdrew its diplomatic representation from Luanda in late 1992. Early
in 1993, however, both governments again began working to normalize
diplomatic ties, and Pretoria promised to crack down on private channels
of assistance from South Africa to Savimbi. Although de Klerk announced
that South Africa would grant recognition only after a fully
representative government had been installed in Luanda, Pretoria
reopened its offices in Luanda and upgraded diplomatic ties in mid-1993.
The two countries established full diplomatic relations on May 27, 1994,
and Luanda appointed an ambassador to South Africa later that year.

In June 1994, President Mandela agreed to requests by UN Special
Envoy to Angola, Alioune Blondin Beye, to attend talks with Angolan
President José Eduardo dos Santos and Savimbi in an effort to end the
fighting in Angola. Pretoria initially provided the venue for talks
between dos Santos and President Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, as dos
Santos sought an end to Zairian assistance to UNITA. Finally, in
November 1994, Mandela witnessed an agreement between dos Santos and
Savimbi to end the fighting in Angola and to begin rebuilding the
country, and the slow process of disarming rebel fighters began in 1995.

Kenya

South Africa had long maintained relatively cordial relations with
Kenya, one of Africa's leading pro-Western governments, although until
1990 these ties were mostly unpublicized and centered around trade. The
nature of their relations changed in November 1990 when South Africa's
minister of foreign affairs, Pik Botha, visited Kenya in the first
publicized ministerial-level contact between the two countries since
1960. Relations were further consolidated when President de Klerk
visited Kenya in June 1991, and Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi visited
Cape Town in June 1992--the first visit to South Africa by an African
head of state.

In addition to strong trade ties in the mid-1990s, South Africa and
Kenya share the desire to promote cooperation among countries of the
Indian Ocean Rim (IOR). In March 1995, delegations from both countries,
along with representatives of Australia, India, Oman, and Singapore, met
in Mauritius to discuss ways to strengthen trade, investment, and
economic cooperation among IOR member states.

Nigeria

Nigeria maintained a hostile attitude toward South Africa for more
than thirty years until the early 1990s. Then the new political
environment led to President de Klerk's visit to Nigeria in April 1992
to discuss bilateral issues, primarily trade. South Africa and Nigeria
established diplomatic relations in mid-1994.

President Mandela was among the small number of world leaders who in
late 1995 appealed to Nigeria's military head of state, General Sani
Abacha, to spare the lives of the writer and environmental activist Ken
Sarowiwa and eight others convicted of inciting violence that resulted
in several deaths in Nigeria. After Sarowiwa and the others were
executed on November 10, 1995, Mandela called for international
sanctions against the Abacha government. South African officials later
dropped this demand, deferring to the OAU, which was reluctant to impose
sanctions against a member state.